Transcendental
by emmadotlouise
Summary: A girl in Galla who suffers from a disease that could eventually kill her goes on a journey of self discovery to find someone who can help her.
1. preface

transcendental

I remember my father had been a proud man, but he had also been a fool, who had believed he could face the world head on and win. I'm inclined to believe otherwise – the world is an evil place, there are always going to be something out there to best you. It was just unfortunate luck that what betrayed him in the end was his own body.

So there I stood on the hilltop, my heart beating heavily in my chest, watching a girl the picture of my mother stand on my father's grave. I doubt she even knew that our mother was a drug junkie, choosing to spend most of her time in a world not her own. I felt the wind stirring around me, raising goosebumps on my arms and the back of my neck. My hair tossed about my face, flying into my eyes.

Inside my heart beat, outside I wore a mask. I'd always been good at masks, you see, and pretending that I didn't care was just another trick of my trade. Pretending to care wasn't hard – this man had left my mother and I when I was two, so I'd never really had a chance to know him, but my run ins with him in later life had been purely business and had given me the chance to stomp on and kill off any of my childish wishes of what-ifs.

We carried the same traitorous genes, the same illness that had claimed him was also trying to claim me, but I'd be damned if I let it.

The same blood ran through our veins and I saw part of him in me, and like that old fool and yet unlike him, this illness would not beat me.


	2. step 1: how to survive

**tran****scendental**

* * *

emclar

* * *

_step one: how to survive_

* * *

Whatever affected me right now didn't have a proper name – and if it did, I didn't know it, which was probably a good thing because I wouldn't even be able to pronounce it... all the names were in some kind of old Tortallan and there's no Gallan equivalent except for blahderahtripovermytongue.

My ma, in her haste to try to have me healed, prayed daily before a shrine in the forest. Up until I turned five years of age and was deemed _unclean_, every day, without fail, she would drag me up the hill, kicking and screaming to where the namesake of our town stood.

The wishing hollow.

It was a huge tree, oak, willow; I don't know. Sometimes there would be little lights in the middle of it if you went there in the middle of the night – like tiny sparkling stars. You could see the inside of the bark, thinking that maybe it lead to another world, it was an entrance into the immortal realms, where the animal gods spent their days and nights and where the gods above us spent _their _days, months, years, watching us live ours.

And then as the sun would rise, the stars would fade and the colours of dawn would filter through the forest, bathing it in reds, pinks, oranges; blazing bright, bright colours.

They used to say that the dawn brought hope. For me, it brought relief. I'd live to see another day.

No one climbed into the hollow for fear of upsetting the mystical voodoo that was in there... you can tell that I really don't believe in it. I've never, ever seen magic heal anyone. I've only seen it drive people crazy. Like my papa. It drove him mental.

He was a good pa, initially. I have memories of him jumping over the maypole with me, laughter filling the air, his toothy grin sparkling red from the reflection of the flames and, in turn, it made me giggle and dance around in the wild and whimsical ways that children do. It lasted until I was five and he left us. He was _unclean _too, like me, but because he was a man, people didn't care as much. Girls like me, with my disease, were the one who passed it onto the babies and so for him it was unfortunate, for me it was a scandal.

And no one looked on me kindly either. Boys – and girls – cross to the other side of the path to keep away from me, scared that they'll contract it too... but they'll never get it. It can't be given to you that way. As much as I tried to tell them that, no one believed me. So I gave up on trying to convince them. I'd find someone else to be my friend. I didn't need them.

I didn't need any of them.

But _she _needed _me_, as much as she hated to admit it.

_She _happened to be my mother. She was a strong woman before she had me – and my father was still with her. They'd both taken a keen interest in farming and harvesting crops, then travelling to Cria every year to sell their goods at the market, the same market that drew crowds upon crowds of people from all over the lands. Some even came from as far as Tortall. I'd heard whispers of a girl years back, a girl from Snowsdale with a knack for dealing with animals, being hired on by a handler from Tortall as an assistant then proving to have something called wild magic, whatever in the codswallop that was.

Magic drove almost everyone wild. My ma often said it was the undoing of my papa. Some people call magic "the gift", but I think it's just a curse.

Anything I've ever achieved has been through hard work with my own hands. I don't see the joy in staring at a piece of wood for minutes upon minutes in an attempt to use your brain to create a flame. The only way to go about it is to get two sticks like any old plain country "hick" (as we're called by the Tyrans, merchant scum) and rub them together to create a spark, then, through tender loving care, nurse the spark to become a flame.

_That _is magic. _That _is learning how to live... how to survive.


End file.
